Chef Kathy Cary and a few of her friends brought a whole new look to fine dining last Saturday night with a special meal she served at Lilly's restaurant in east Louisville. For 97 lucky diners, it was a study in how great minds complete a great menu. For the women who put the meal together, it was a chance to leave solitary kitchens, test themselves and learn from each other.

At a glance, the meal was a fund-raising event for the non-profit James Beard Foundation, which promotes chefs and networking among them. Cary has traveled to the foundation's headquarters in New York three times to show off her talents.

But this time, the networking happened in Louisville. Cary asked three of the country's best women chefs to join her in putting on the benefit, allowing her the time to show off her hometown and learn from the chefs who joined her -- as they learned from each other.

"I love working with other people," said Deborah Madison, who made a name for herself as chef of the vegetarian restaurant Greens in San Francisco and who now is a writer. "When you're a writer, you're very isolated. Food is such a social thing, and when you're removed, for me, it begins to drive you crazy."

So she traveled from her home in Santa Fe, N.M., where she had set aside the project of her latest book "Deborah Madison's Essential Vegetarian Cookbook," [subsequent to this article, winner of the Julia Child Cookbook Award for Best Book of the Year] to join in the fund-raising dinner. Anne Rosenzweig, chef-owner of Arcadia and The Lobster Club, both in New York City, came, along with Odessa Piper, executive chef of L'Etoile in Madison, Wis.

The women share some circumstances. They've all made their considerable reputations using fresh, local ingredients in innovative ways. Rosenzweig has been known to hunt mushrooms in New York's Central Park. Piper, Rosenzweig and Cary were featured in a recent book, "Great Women Chefs," by Julie Stillman (Turner Publishing, 1996). Madison, Piper and Cary were featured in a recent Food & Wine magazine article on chefs and farm markets.

The visiting chefs arrived on Friday night, had dinner at Lilly's and spent the night on the Oldham County farm where Cary grew up and where her parents still live. The women walked and picked wild flowers for Saturday's dinner, then forayed to Capriole goat farm and dairy in Southern Indiana Saturday morning.

The visitors had brought little with them. While many prominent chefs carry huge amounts of food when they travel to other restaurants, Cary suggested that they all cook with what's available locally.

"Kathy's inspiration here was that we all come down and work with her ingredients, " said Piper, who did bring chocolate truffle mixture. But she used the apples that Cary had procured from a Southern Indiana apple farm, while Cary used green beans and goat cheese from Indiana, and kale, banana peppers and greens from Hart County, Ky.

Arriving with nothing more than your knife and your apron might be considered chancy, but "if there's disaster," said Rosenzweig, "you create a new dish."

There was no disaster in sight, however, and hundreds of prawns necessary for her "crispy prawn rolls" course came in fresh-tasting and huge -- about 11 to the pound. They were marinated in garlic, fish sauce and Kentucky-grown fresh coriander before being wrapped in egg-roll wrappers and deep-fried.

It was a closer call for Piper, whom Cary relentlessly teases as the "queen of filo." When filo dough works, it's beautiful, and Piper's filo-wrapped apples stuffed with hickory-nut penuche were a high point of the evening. But there were tense moments when the ultra-thin filo inevitably didn't work, and there was some patching to be done.

"Stuff happens," said Madison about cooking in a restaurant. "You have to pay attention to your ingredients and you have to not be too attached to your ideas. Cooking is always about compensating."

Each chef worked alone at her own station, accompanied by Lilly's regular staff, who helped Madison stem the tiny greens that would go into the salad; wrap won-ton wrappers around more than 300 of Rosenzweig's prawns; stuff and fry banana peppers for Cary; and peel nearly 100 baked apples for Piper.

It was off-hours when the women were able to get together, for a hike through the fields of Cary's parents' farm. That's when Madison -- who's trying to help the farmers in Santa Fe -- asked questions of Piper, whose restaurant is situated near one of the most successful farmers' markets in the country. Piper, in turn, talked to Madison about the nature of hazelnut oil and persimmons, and then revealed that she planned to repeat Madison's salad in her own Wisconsin restaurant.

A collage of efforts, the meal was served to all 97 patrons at the same time. The seven-course meal -- eight if you include the before-dinner hors d'oeuvres passed while people gathered -- was cooked and assembled by dozens of people, including the four women. At serving time, nearly a dozen people were in the kitchen plating up, and individual servers poured wine.

Though many of the recipes were complicated and required unusual ingredients, the following dishes weren't complicated, and made a great impression on the guests. I watched them being prepared, and loved them, but I haven't tested these recipes in my own kitchen yet.

THE MENU

Hudson Valley foie gras with acorn squash and baby kale (Kathy Cary)
Mirassou Monterey Riesling '95

Crispy prawn rolls with sweet garlic-cucumber slaw (Anne Rosenzweig)
Charles Krug Chardonnay '94

Lamb medallion with smoked-tomato sauce
Banana peppers stuffed with Kennebec potatoes and goat cheese
Emerides French green beans (Kathy Cary)
Sterling Vineyards Merlot '94

Rocky Meadow cider sorbet (Kathy Cary)

Garden greens with Fuyu persimmons and hazelnuts (Deborah Madison) Albola Pinot
Grigio '95

Caramelized apples baked in crispy pastry with raspberries, caramel and creme anglaise (Odessa Piper)

Barton & Gustier Vouvray '95 Black walnut bourbon chocolate truffles (Odessa Piper)
G.H. Mumm Grand Cordon Brut Rose '85